1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a machine-translating process and particularly relates to a process of automatically generating a translation-example dictionary in which some portions of translation-example information are expressed by variables.
2. Description of the Related Art
When translating an original text written in a source language into another language using a machine translation system, it is often insufficient to use a basic dictionary and/or a technical term dictionary provided in a computer for providing a translation which corresponds well to the meaning of the original text. Accordingly, an Example-based Machine Translation process has been proposed in which frequently-used translation examples each including an original text and a translated text are pre-registered by a person in charge of translation and then a translation process of the relevant original text is performed.
A translation-example dictionary used in the Example-based Machine Translation may be a type of dictionary in which some portions of the translation example information, for example nouns, are expressed as variables. Such a dictionary is used for a machine translation process in which, when there is a correspondence between the original text to be translated and the original text data in the translation-example dictionary where from the variable have been excluded, the variables of the original text data and the translated text data are substituted by data included in the basic dictionary and/or technical term dictionary.
In order to create a translation-example dictionary having some portions of the translation-example information expressed as variables, the person in charge of translation must determine which portion of the original text and the translated text are to be expressed as variables. Also, since the variables must be manually registered into the dictionary by the person in charge of translation, many steps are required for creating the translation-example dictionary, and also, there is a problem that the judging criteria for portions to be expressed as variables may differ between different persons in charge of translation.
Also, it is understood that the reliability of a translated text obtained by translation using a translation-example dictionary having many variables is lower than the reliability of a translated text obtained by translation using a translation-example dictionary having a few variables. Often, however, no material is provided for determining the reliability of the translated text.